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Peakon
Last Updated: 2026-03-13
Reference: Survey Configuration Options

Reference: Survey Configuration Options

Workday Peakon is transitioning to a Flexible Listening Question model which provides greater simplicity and flexibility to our question model through a number of enhancements.
For customers who had their Workday Peakon production instances created from the 31st March 2026 onwards, you will use the flexible listening question model unless you opted out.
For customers who had their Workday Peakon production instance created before 31st March 2026, you will continue to use the existing Workday Peakon Question model until we make it possible for you to upgrade to the flexible listening question model in the 26R2 and 27R1 release cycles.
There's a wide range of settings that enable you to customize the survey experience. In general, we recommend finalizing all settings before the survey launches.
Configuration
Description
Effect
Extending the survey close date.
You can extend the survey close date before the survey opens and also while it's live. After the survey has entered soft close, it's no longer possible to extend the close date. Highlighted drivers and segments calculate as soon as the survey enters soft close, which is why it's not possible to amend the close date at this point.
This action affects the open survey round.
Overriding or disabling the reminder send out date.
These settings affect the reminders for all employees who didn't yet participate at the send-out point. If you override the next reminder date, it also pushes subsequent reminder emails backward or forward by the same number of days. If you manually trigger a reminder, it doesn't affect the schedule of subsequent reminders.
This action affects the open survey round.
Disabling a survey round.
When on an automated cadence, a new survey starts in accordance with your survey frequency. It's possible to stop the automated cadence at any point. Example: pausing the survey can be useful during holiday periods.
This action stops the next round from recurring until you re-enable data collection. It doesn't close an already open round.
Changing the survey frequency.
Changing the survey frequency can affect the question distribution in the next survey round. Example: setting the frequency from monthly to quarterly means that more questions are due next survey round.
This action affects the next round.
Changing question frequency.
Changing the survey frequency affects the question distribution in the open and next survey rounds. Example: increasing the question frequency during an open round decreases the number of questions in that round.
This action affects the current open round, for employees who didn't yet answer their survey. Employees who already opened the link, without answering, might need to clear their cache to see the changes.
Enabling or disabling specific questions or question sets.
Provided the question set is active on your schedule, any changes to questions from within that set are effective immediately.
This action affects the current open round, for employees who didn't yet answer their survey. Employees who already opened the link, without answering, might need to clear their cache to see the changes.
Adding a new included target segment.
You can amend the targeting by adding a segment to the
Only including
field.
The
Employees
page will display a banner asking whether the newly qualified employees should be part of the survey. If this targeting excludes employees that already have the survey link, they can still participate in that round, but not future rounds.
Excluding an already targeted segment.
You can amend the targeting by adding a segment to the
Excluding
field.
If you exclude a segment during a live round, the employees can still use their link to answer the survey for that round. Excluded employees won’t be part of future rounds while the restriction remains.
Deleting a survey schedule.
It’s possible to delete any custom survey schedule that doesn’t currently have an open round. It's not possible to delete the company schedule.
This action is effective immediately.
Enabling or disabling email send-out.
Disabling email send-out doesn't retract already sent emails. Enabling email send-out after initial emails should have gone out won’t trigger them. We recommend setting email send-out before the survey round opens.
This setting is effective for the next round.
Editing survey email content or subject line.
You can edit the email, as well as provide translations for it.
Email content generates at the send-out. For emails that haven't sent yet, any changes will reflect already in the same round.
Changing the digest email preference.
You can set the digest to
End of round
even if initially you had it set to
Automatic
and the other way around. If setting it to
Automatic
, users will receive digest emails from the next day, if there are new unread comments.
This action is effective immediately.
Changing the survey sender.
Set the survey sender to a person's name (Example: CEO, HR Leader, Employee Experience leader) or the survey name.
Customized survey senders don't display on reminder emails, where the survey sender is the Peakon product. If the sender of the reminder was a specific person or a team, it could cause confidentiality concerns.
Email content generates at the send-out. For emails that haven't sent yet, any changes will reflect already in the same round.
Enabling or disabling illustrations.
Control whether illustrations display in the survey.
When illustrations are enabled, clicking on the
Go to survey
button takes you to home page, while clicking the illustration takes you to first question. This action affects the current open round, for employees who didn't yet answer their survey. Employees who already opened the link, without answering, might need to clear their cache to see the changes. Survey illustrations are only available for questions from the Engagement, Diversity & Inclusion, and Health & Wellbeing question sets.
Enabling or disabling the survey engagement summary.
It’s possible to enable for employees to view a summary of their own engagement over time.
This action is effective immediately, if you enable it during a live round. It's visible to employees who answer their survey after you enable this setting.
Changing the survey send-out time or time zone.
Adjust a survey send-out time and time zone at the latest on the day before survey launch.
Peakon queues up the emails in accordance to send-out time settings as soon as the round opens. If you make changes on these settings before the day of survey launch, they're effective for the first survey email of the upcoming round. If you change these settings after the round opens (00:30 in schedule time zone), they're effective for subsequent emails only.
Adding or removing languages.
It’s possible to restrict the survey languages. The order you set is the order that will display in the survey. The first language becomes the automatic language for employees who don't have a detected language yet.
This action is effective immediately, if you enable it during a live round. Employees who already opened the link, without answering, might need to clear their cache to see the updated languages.
Adding editable attributes.
You can enable employees to populate their own segment data on specified attributes.
This action is effective immediately, if you enable it during a live round. Employees who already opened the link, without answering, might need to clear their cache to see the updated changes.
Adding, removing, or editing a customized message to editable attributes.
You can add a message to explain why you're collecting segment information, and add translations to it.
This action is effective immediately, if you enable it during a live round. Employees who already opened the link, without answering, might need to clear their cache to see the updated changes.
Enabling SMS for survey send-out.
If you enable SMS send-out, only employees with a valid phone number will receive the survey through SMS.
This action is effective immediately. SMS notifications trigger at the same time as email send-out.
Enabling Kiosk mode.
You can enable or disable the kiosk mode at any point.
All employees can immediately use the kiosk URL to authenticate into the survey, as long as they have the necessary details.
Changing kiosk mode method.
We don't recommend changing the kiosk method during a live round. Communicate kiosk instructions and codes before the survey round launches.
This action is effective immediately.
Changing the kiosk mode URL.
We don't recommend changing the kiosk URL during a live round. Communicate kiosk instructions and codes before the survey round launches.
This action is effective immediately.
Changing the device privacy setting for kiosk mode.
We recommend setting the device privacy before survey launch.
This action is effective immediately.
Adding survey or segment branding.
We recommend setting branding before survey launch, to ensure that employees see the correct company names and logos.
This action is effective immediately, if you enable it during a live round. Employees who already opened the link, without answering, might need to clear their cache to see the updated changes.